Modern graphical user interfaces present graphical objects or items displayed on a screen to allow users to interact with various applications. Leading personal computer operating systems, such as Apple Mac OS®, provide user interfaces in which a dock is displayed in the user interface for access to applications and system resources. The dock can be any graphical object, such as a taskbar, menu, virtual button or other user interface element that allows a user to link to applications by viewing and selecting icons representing the applications. In addition to application icons, the dock can also include other graphical items that provide information or resources to a user, such as visual indicators of the status of various system components or other visual elements associated with different applications.
In some instances, the user can configure the location, appearance, content, and settings of the dock. For example, the user may decide to add, rearrange, or remove icons displayed in the dock. Different mechanisms can be provided by the operating system to allow the user to configure icons in the dock. In certain instances, the user can select an icon using a pointer to move the icon to a different location or remove the icon from the dock entirely. The movement of the pointer can be controlled by the user inputting commands using an input device such as a mouse, touchpad, keyboard, or multi-touch input device. The user can select a particular icon with the pointer and drag the icon to a different location on the dock. In some implementations, the user can also select the icon and move the icon off the dock by dragging the icon off the dock to a different region of the user interface.
The drag and drop operations used to rearrange and move icons in the dock can consist of a user's selection of graphical items through an input device. The selection of graphical items can be triggered in response to a user's manual input, such as the user depressing a button or region of a touch screen or multi-touch input device. In some instances, however, a user can accidentally select a particular icon or unintentionally drop an icon in an undesired area. The unintentional user inputs can trigger unwanted actions or disrupt other tasks performed by the user. For example, in some instances, dragging an icon away from the dock and releasing the icon in an area of the user interface other than the dock can automatically remove the icon from the dock. Instead of removing the icon from the dock, however, the user may have intended to link to an application represented by the icon or to access a different graphical object in the vicinity of the icon.